


a murder in the dark

by torasame



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Map of the Soul, Self-Destruction, Sherlock and self destruction, Sherlock can't feel, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22291108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torasame/pseuds/torasame
Summary: The first person Sherlock killed was his shadow.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	a murder in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in one sitting so i don't really like this much.

Sherlock had always been afraid of the dark.

He wondered why he was so afraid in the first place. Maybe it was the emptiness. Maybe it was the possibility that it could be filled by something unwanted.

He would sit in his room as the thoughts began to suffocate him like a boa constrictor around his throat. His mother would have finally finished blowing up on him and proceeded to pretend like he didn't exist. His parents wouldn't let him leave the lights on. They'd shut him in and that was the end of it. Sherlock figured early on that begging for mercy was pointless.

He eventually grew numb to the sensation of crying himself into a restless slumber. He'd pull the blankets over himself to escape the whispers in the dark. He used to get hit when he was younger; he could still feel the bruises and cuts behind his thighs whenever he found himself curled up like a coward.

The thoughts would beat against his brain and send his head spinning and his tears heavy with tears he could not control. He had lost almost all sense of feeling at that point— it all came down to frustration and fatigue.

He had tried to speak up about it in the past. He tried reasoning out— he tried explaining it in the only way he knew how. But everyone shut him out.They told him they felt the same— but he  _ didn't feel. _ They claim they never understood him but  _ never tried. _ They called him a  _ smartass _ and turned the other cheek. If they did stick around, they'd pour their hearts out to him. They'd scream, cry and laugh it all off after Sherlock was done playing the role of  _ therapist. _ It all ended the same. Everyone would always just throw him back into the dark.

Sherlock was left alone with his shadows. He couldn't even construct whatever remained of the personas he could not identify. Nothing could escape logic; there was no mask that could veil his eyes from the shadows that followed him despite all the lights he's out up.

There was always this crawling in his skin. A pain— an  _ impulse _ to  _ cut through the skin and escape. _ The voices in his head that told him to claw at himself and let the anguish spill onto the floor. There was the impulse to  _ destroy _ . At times, it led him to shatter glass and break his bones. They'd call him out and bring him outside.

They'd offered him smiles and talked over the air of destruction that wavered over him. Mycroft would mock him, tell him to  _ get a voice _ . His mother would laugh and act as though she did not just take her arsenal of words and pierce his limbs. She would ask though she just  _ pushed him to do more _ . She'd ignore the fact that he had fallen to the ground and broke his knees. She still expected him to get up. She expected. That's all she did for him.

He'd retreat to the dark to stop himself from combusting. He'd dig his fingers into his hair and tear at himself until his body gave in and oblivion overcame him for just that moment. But it didn't last very long.

Eventually, the shadows poked him awake. The weight of his mother's standards would rest on his chest. He'd throw a fit because he didn't know what else to do. He'd sit alone in the dark with the need to destroy and the shadows he suppressed.

He was always  _ Sherlock the son, Sherlock the brother, Sherlock the school boy—  _ he was always  _ Sherlock Holmes  _ and he hated it. With every stupid argument his mother would put against him, the more words die in his throat. The more of himself he suppressed and the more he wished he could have just died. What a cowardly way to go.

The dark confronted him with all his regrets. With all the words he left unsaid and the pain he never had to chance to  _ feel _ . The pain he never got to express. His personas morphed in with the darkness. He remembered his thoughts quite vividly, it was something his mind palace refused to throw out.  _ If he couldn't kill himself, he could kill parts of him. _

_ If he couldn't kill himself— he would kill his shadow instead. _

His personas and shadows were indistinguishable. He hadn't cared. He still doesn't. He slaughtered the boy that was meant to live up to his mother's plans. He murdered the manipulable little brother Mycroft wanted him to become. He burned away the school boy who was meant to  _ obey and perform _ . But it wasn't enough. No, he eradicated all the flaws his mother saw in him. He carved and stripped everything away until there was nothing but bones and the cold, calculating monster everyone perceived him to be. He used the bloodshed to paint the mural for what was to be  _ Sherlock Holmes. _

His family had finally decided to open the door and they found him in the middle of all of the debris. His mother took him into her arms and cried for forgiveness. She wondered what it took for him to break so much.

"It isn't because of me, is it?"

Ah, she inserted herself into the situation again. Sherlock almost laughed then. There were tears in her eyes.

"Oh of course," he replied, "not at all."

He stepped back into the darkness and it welcomed him like a murderer at his crime scene. He didn't play by anyone's rules. He didn't have to play as their detective anymore. The pitch waned at the glaring depression in the air— Sherlock settled into it and offered his own numbness to fix the gap. 

His parents had seen it as punishment— but they led him to a space he could almost call his own. He saw the boy serenaded by the lullaby of his own fear— Sherlock handed that boy a knife and watched the shadows bleed out around him. His mother disapproved of his mural; she never had a taste for art anyway.

They all left him alone. They all left him in the dark. He'd finally come to terms with who he was and now they feel remorse. So Sherlock responded with in the only way he was taught— he tuned them all out and offered a smile.

And now the darkness feared Sherlock Holmes.

  
  



End file.
